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Korg Poly-800 Battery Mod

Oct 08, 2022

Korg Poly-800

So I won my first biding auction. And what a gem, a Korg Poly-800 released in 1983 boasting distinctive reverse (black & white) keys. After dusting it off and some initial testing, I quickly found that the presets failed to function as expected. So I dug into it and found that the original patches had been backed up to cassette tape. Lacking both the original cassette or a cassette player, I found that someone already uploaded the sound to youtube. By connecting the Poly-800 to my laptop via an auxiliary cable and playing the uploaded sounds, the presets miraculously reappeared - a moment of pure enchantment! However, this joy was short-lived as the settings vanished upon powering down the synthesizer. So I had to dug deeper and found that some of these synths were build on a budget and did not include an internal battery for it to store data after being unplugged. A swift trip to the store yielded a soldering kit, battery holder, and the essential battery. For detailed instructions and insights into this restoration journey, a comprehensive guide on Boy Meets Synth’s Blog proved invaluable.

The pictures of my first soldering adventure:

Soldering1 Soldering2 Soldering3